Kavli Affiliate: Aaron Roodman
| First 5 Authors: Riley Clarke, Riley Clarke, , ,
| Summary:
We present the first derivation of a stellar flare temperature profile from
single-band photometry. Stellar flare DWF030225.574-545707.45129 was detected
in 2015 by the Dark Energy Camera as part of the Deeper, Wider, Faster
Programme. The brightness ($Delta m_g = -6.12$) of this flare, combined with
the high air mass ($1.45 lesssim X lesssim 1.75$) and blue filter (DES $g$,
398-548 nm) in which it was observed, provided ideal conditions to measure the
zenith-ward apparent motion of the source due to differential chromatic
refraction (DCR) and, from that, infer the effective temperature of the event.
We model the flare’s spectral energy distribution as a blackbody to produce the
constraints on flare temperature and geometric properties derived from
single-band photometry. We additionally demonstrate how simplistic assumptions
on the flaring spectrum, as well as on the evolution of flare geometry, can
result in solutions that overestimate effective temperature. Exploiting DCR
enables studying chromatic phenomena with ground-based astrophysical surveys
and stellar flares on M-dwarfs are a particularly enticing target for such
studies due to their ubiquity across the sky, and the heightened color contrast
between their red quiescent photospheres and the blue flare emission. Our novel
method will enable similar temperature constraints for large sample of objects
in upcoming photometric surveys like the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space
and Time.
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